Friday, December 18, 2009

Mt Vernon and Humble Pie

(sorry can't get pics in right order...just deal with it! :)

Wowzers! It's been a busy couple days!!

We got the van all loaded the night before Nathan was going to go to put the last of our stuff in the camper.....and the van wouldn't start!! Ugh....so after a little thinking and phone calls, we found a friend who had a battery charger and that did the trick! So thankfully it wasn't a whole day wasted! We thought we had most things already loaded in the camper when my dad was here so we'd always say 'Oh, we just have our clothes and some dishes to pack still..." Does this look like only some clothes and dishes?!?!

And that was with EVERY seat except the front two OUT and it was PACKED!! I have a feeling I'll be getting rid of a lot more things once we get to our camper!! (We did get rid of a TON more stuff yesterday though...a family from church came and got all our furniture (table, chairs, couch, tv, lamps, etc) and then I gave garbage bags and bags full of stuff to other friends and then I brought a car load full to the thrift store. It was funny bc the older gentleman at the store helping me unload it says "man, you do have alotta stuff...your house is going to be empty!" I said "That's the point!" :)

Interruption of story to show you a couple pics of the snow we got last week....

The guys plowing out our driveway...notice how high it is and how little their snow blowers are?! I don't think they make blowers in NE like they do in MN!

Nathan "sweeping" off the snow after a dusting since we don't own a shovel :)

Ok...back to our move...

So, anyway, yesterday was filled with cleaning, packing, cleaning, packing...and then some more cleaning and some more packing...

Tiernan had to clean the walls downstairs bc he wrote on them with pencil...(sorry, I couldn't get the pic to line up)

We FINALLY left this morning and are now on our way to VA!

BUT....we've had a couple obstacles so far and I think we'll have a couple more on the way!

Today we drove 600 miles and it took us about 9 hours and 40 mins (those 40 mins being our ONE stop that we took...yes, 9 hours in the car with 4, 4 and under and only one stop! Not bad!) The weather was okay for most of it, but we did go through some rain/snow for a few hours, but since it was just wet when it hit the ground, it didn't slow us down too much.

But here's the story for the day...well, one of them anyway...

When we were at our 'potty break' stop half way through, I told Nathan I wanted to gas up since we were there and I was at a half tank. He told me I should wait but I really felt like I should so he said 'fine' and waited in his car while I gassed up. I suggested that he gas up to so we wouldn't have to stop later and since we were already there yadda yadda...Well, he didn't take my advice and we just left after I filled up. Weeeeelllll.....as we were (not kidding you!) ON THE RAMP coming off the interstate AT OUR DESTINATION FOR THE NIGHT....guess what happened?!?!

NATHAN RAN OUT OF GAS!!!!

And yes, ramps are usually UP HILL. I think he ate a huge piece of humble pie as he walked to my car while both of us are stopped in the shoulder with our hazards on.

"I'll run to the gas station and get some gas and I'll be back," he said. "Yeah right!" I said. "It's a long way and there's 2 cars with kids in each and it's dark out...I'm not staying here!" "What are we going to do?" "Get in your car, I'm pushing you!" "You're what?!?" "I'm going to push you!, I said"

So, I pushed him....with my minivan....up the ramp (which was 2 lanes by the way, with TONS of traffic)...around a semi truck in our way on the shoulder...turned at the stop light...and from there with a little push from me, he could coast all the way to the gas station that was on the next block.

He thanked me later for not getting too mad at him. His exact words were "Thanks for not getting mad...well, you got mad but you controled yourself a lot" (I interpreted it to mean "I know I'm such a loser for not filling up while we were at a gas station and next time I'll make sure I do that bc now I feel really stupid that I ran out of gas 1/4 mile from our destination and that you had to come up with the idea to push me bc I would have never though of that (which he did admit)"

You're welcome, Honey.

So after being in...lemme see...4 states today (Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri and Illinois) we are settled for the night at a hotel in Mt Vernon. But I think our fun has just begun....

Apparently there is "historical" snow falls on the east coast, directly in the path that we are going....great.

Actually, I looked at the weather for the town that we are moving to and it said 5-8 inches of snow tonight and 8-12 tomorrow!!! Whew! And they said they usually dont get snow. HA! That's what they said about NE too and you see how that went! Maybe it's just us?! Maybe we just can't get away from snow?? Maybe we should move to AZ and see if it follows us there?!

So anyway, now it's late and I need to go to bed. The kids are out and it might be a long day tomorrow...although if we get snowe din somewhere, maybe I'll have less driving tomorrow than I did today!